ABOUT

The journey is finished, it is time to settle down, to find a place where to plant a tree, and build a house. A piece of land surrounded by security cameras isolated from the violence of the city. This place is the eponymous BRICKLAND. but it’s not as a concrete location, rather a symbol for many other cities in our globalized world that are gated communities as they exist in the United States, South America, India or China. Like in Atom Egoyan’s film The Adjuster (Canada, 1991), in which an insurance agent named Noah visits refugees in a boat-like motel, these cities are not a home, but rather a hopeless refuge. BRICKLAND is a metaphor for the increasing “ghettoization” of our world and the rapid increase in urban slums, in which sayings like “there’s no place like home” are a sheer derision. In places like this, you can only travel virtually – like Second Life – but physically nobody leaves. BRICKLAND is a facade that hides black despair, social isolation, madness and bourgeois ennui.

PRESS REVIEWS

“Constanza Macras’ choreographies unpredictable powers are at work. Right at the beginning of Brickland there is a powerful ensemble scene, nine muscular bodies collapse rhythmically, their arms stretched to the sky, their hands folded as if in prayer. [...] The sound of angels sighing and in this brash performance we see a heretical rite for our post-religious epoch, and above all shines in bright letters: “Fog of Confusion”. This preludes the evening: It is about nothing less than mankind’s futile search for a place in the universe, a place in history and an aim in life.” - Die Zeit, December 2007

„Constanza Macras, in her work “Brickland”, offers a glimpse into a deserted luxury settlement in her hometown Buenos Aires, turning it into fast-paced dance-theater with her Dorky-Park ensemble – fresh, chaotic, tender, endearing, and in all its diversity of temperament and style a unified whole. (…) Disarmingly tender love stories alternate with manic nonsense. Pseudo harmonies and smug arrogance are exposed. Bought security protects against nothing, not even against oneself. The impulsions are unavoidable, the explosions painfully healing.Constanza Macras at her best.” - Financial Times, December 2007

“That’s how the real Brickland perished: The inhabitants sold their cars, they did not leave their covered houses anymore, they lost their jobs and went bankrupt. (…) What would have helped? Just a carnival against the cannibalistic authority, as an art kicking over the traces just like this grandiose company named DorkyPark.” - Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 2007